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Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity
in Education

Volume 3

Series Editors
Aaron Koh
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
Singapore
Victoria Carrington
School of Education & Lifelong Learning University of East Anglia, Norwich,
United Kingdom
We live in a time where the complex nature and implications of social, political and
cultural issues for individuals and groups is increasingly clear. While this may lead
some to focus on smaller and smaller units of analysis in the hope that by understanding
the parts we may begin to understand the whole, this book series is premised on
the strongly held view that researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested
in education will increasingly need to integrate knowledge gained from a range of
disciplinary and theoretical sources in order to frame and address these complex issues.
A transdisciplinary approach takes account the uncertainty of knowledge and the
complexity of social and cultural issues relevant to education. It acknowledges that
there will be unresolved tensions and that these should be seen as productive. With
this in mind, the reflexive and critical nature of cultural studies and its focus on the
processes and currents that construct our daily lives has made it a central point of
reference for many working in the contemporary social sciences and education.
This book series seeks to foreground transdisciplinary and cultural studies in-
fluenced scholarship with a view to building conversations, ideas and sustainable
networks of knowledge that may prove crucial to the ongoing development and
relevance of the field of educational studies. The series will place a premium on
manuscripts that critically engage with key educational issues from a position that
draws from cultural studies or demonstrates a transdisciplinary approach. This can
take the form of reports of new empirical research, critical discussions and/or theo-
retical pieces. In addition, the series editors are particularly keen to accept work
that takes as its focus issues that draw from the wider Asia Pacific region but that
may have relevance more globally, however all proposals that reflect the diversity
of contemporary educational research will be considered.
Series Editors:
Aaron Koh (National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore) Victoria Carrington (University of East Anglia)
Editorial Board:
Angel Lin (University of Hong Kong, China), Angelia Poon (National Institute
of Education, Singapore), Anna Hickey-Moody (Goldsmith College, University of
London, UK),Barbara Comber (Queensland Technological University, Australia),
Catherine Beavis (Griffith University, Australia), Cameron McCarthy (University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA),Chen Kuan-Hsing (National Chiao
Tung University, Taiwan), C. J. W.-L. Wee (Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore), Daniel Goh (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Jackie
Marsh (University of Sheffield, UK), Jane Kenway (Monash University, Australia)
Jennifer A Sandlin (Arizona State University, Tempe, USA), Jennifer Rowsell (Brock
University, Canada), Jo-Anne Dillabough, (University of Cambridge, UK)Mary Lou
Rasmussen (Monash University, Australia), Megan Watkins (University of Western
Sydney, Australia), Terence Chong (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore).
Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Lawrence
Liu E-mail: Lawrence.Liu@springer.com
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11200
Encarna Rodríguez
Editor

Pedagogies and Curriculums

to (Re)imagine Public
Education

Transnational Tales of Hope and Resistance

1  3
Editor
Encarna Rodríguez
Department of Educational Leadership
Saint Joseph’s University
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
USA

ISSN 2345-7708          ISSN 2345-7716 (electronic)

Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education
ISBN 978-981-287-489-4    ISBN 978-981-287-490-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-490-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015940002

Springer Singapore Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors
or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

Springer Singapore is part of Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

To my husband, John, a committed and
loving Philadelphia public school teacher
whose work reminds me everyday that
the educational future of disenfranchised
students depends on our ability to (re)claim
the democratic promises of public education

[public] Schools embody the dreams we have

for our children. All of them. These dreams
must remain public property.

Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas

Contents

1 Introduction............................................................................................     1
Encarna Rodríguez

2 Reclaiming Schools as Public Sites for Democratic

Imagination.............................................................................................    15
Encarna Rodríguez

3 The Ayllu-school (Bolivia 1931–1940)..................................................    35

Encarna Rodríguez and Valentín Arispe Hinojosa

Tsé Ch’ízhí Diné Bi’ólta’—Rough Rock, The People’s

4 
School: Reflections on a Half-Century of Navajo
Community-Controlled Education (U.S. 1966)...................................    49
Teresa L. McCarty and Charles M. Roessel

5 English Literature at Brondesbury and Kilburn High

School (UK 1980–1984).........................................................................    65
Alex Moore

6 “Starting Life Again”: School and Community at

Arthurdale (U.S. 1934–1936)................................................................    81
Daniel Perlstein

7 Bachillerato IMPA: Middle School Education

for Adults at a Recovered Factory (Argentina 2003)..........................    97
Gabriela Mendez

8 Promoting Social and Political Change Through Pedagogy:

Lorenzo Milani and the Barbiana School (Italy 1954–1967)............. 113
Almudena A. Navas Saurin

vii
viii Contents

9 Cifteler, the First Village Institute (Turkey 1937–1954)..................... 127

Gokce Gokalp

10 Building Inclusive Education from the Ground Up: The

Transformative Experience of HKRSS Tai Po Secondary
School (Hong Kong 2006–2013)............................................................ 141
Franky K. C. Poon and Angel M. Y. Lin

11 Los Talleres: A CONAFE Post-primary Center

(Mexico 1996–2003)............................................................................... 157
Santiago Rincón-Gallardo

12 A Multicultural Curriculum for Educational Equity:

Montclair High School, (U.S. 1983–1990)............................................ 171
Bernadette Anand

13 La Nostra Escola Comarcal: An Educational Cooperative

in Defense of Democratic, Active and Valencian Pedagogy
(Spain 1973)............................................................................................ 187
Mª del Carmen Agulló Díaz and Andrés Payá Rico

14 Public Schools as Publicly Imagined..................................................... 203

Encarna Rodríguez

Index ............................................................................................................... 219

About the Editor

Encarna Rodríguez, PhD, is associate professor of education in the Department

of Educational Leadership at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, United States.
She is the author of Neoliberalismo, Educación y Género: Análisis Crítico de la
Reforma Educativa Española [neoliberalism, education and gender: A critical
analysis of the Spanish education reform] (Madrid: La Piqueta). Her research on
neoliberalism and education has been published in journals such as Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Journal of Cur riculum Theorizing, Revista de Educación,
or Journal of Pedagogy. Her research on internationalizing teacher education has
been published in Teacher Education Quarterly and Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly.

ix
Chapter 1
Introduction

Encarna Rodríguez

I have always believed in public education. I had no choice, really. Growing up in

the poor and rural Spain of the 1960s, still under a fascist dictatorship, I soon real-
ized that schooling was the gift of an entire generation of Spaniards that, like my
parents, had entrusted education with their hopes for a better future for their chil-
dren. I held this belief despite the feelings of emptiness and alienation that defined
my own educational experience. As I fulfilled my parents’ dreams and achieved the
education never available to them, I also unknowingly became the silent recipient
of a curriculum that effectively ignored the social and political histories of those
around me and conveyed a body of knowledge that was hardly relevant to the min-
ing community in which I lived. I continued believing in public schools even as I
faced my first disappointment with the notion of education as a democratic political
tool. As a young professional in the new democratic Spain of the 1980s, I enthu-
siastically embraced the new socialist education reform promising to prepare the
new generation of Spaniards to reject the authoritarian propositions that sustained
the former dictatorial regime and to educate active participants in the consolidation
of the new democratic regime. With an emphasis on compulsory education until
age 16 (formerly 14), this reform achieved important goals such as the inclusion of
students with special needs in all public schools and universal access to kindergar-
ten. Predictably, however, it also carried the disillusions germane to those politi-
cal processes that generate almost boundless expectations for social change and I
learned that, despite the great commitment generated, the changes implemented by
the reform still failed many of the students for whom school has traditionally been
an unattractive, or perhaps more accurately, a cryptic proposition.
My belief in public education also survived the critical analyses of schooling I
encountered when entering academia. As I tried to articulate my expectations for
education in this milieu, I became keenly aware that any kind of democratic expec-
tation for schools requires a high degree of tolerance to political, intellectual, and
personal uncertainty. In the world of the “posts” (postmodernism, poststructuralism,

E. Rodríguez ()
Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, USA
e-mail: erodrigu@sju.edu
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015 1
E. Rodríguez (ed.), Pedagogies and Curriculums to (Re)imagine Public Education,
Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 3,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-490-0_1
2 E. Rodríguez

postcolonialism et al.), I quickly learned, our views are never neutral or unproblem-
atic, no matter how badly we want them to be. Rather, they always represent subject
positions in which the view of the world we construct is inevitably linked to the
relations of power that define who we are in relation to others (Giroux 1991; Rose
1996; Foucault 1991; Peters 1996; Silva 2001; Weedon 1987). Thus, those who in-
spired me to see education as a democratic project, also pushed me to see the many
ways in which school reproduces inequality (Apple 2001; Anyon 2006; Gordon
and Nocon 2008; Rogers 2006), and to understand the complexities of the identities
public education generates (Perry et al. 2003; Tatum 1997; Valenzuela 1999; Wil-
lis 1981). They further inspired me to see curriculum as a discursive text that we
need to decipher (Alba et al. 2000; Hendry 2011; Joseph 2011; Slattery 1995), to
understand ourselves in relation to the larger historical context we occupy, and to
interrogate the relations of power upon which we construct our view of the world
(McIntyre 2000; Tabulawa 2003; Woo and Simmons 2008). These analyses warned
me of the danger of charging schools with the democratic expectations societies are
unwilling to fulfill. Paradoxically, they also strengthened my belief in public educa-
tion as I understood that schools can be a precious social space in which to explore
the tensions and possibilities involved in our necessarily imperfect but also full-
of-promises democratic regimes. I willingly embraced uncertainty and subjectivity
as rich soils for my personal search for more democratic conceptions of education
and I eventually found intellectual solace in the understanding that advocating for
public education was a delicate act of reclaiming schools as places for democratic
dreams while unrelentingly denouncing the multiple and complex ways in which
these institutions fail to achieve such dreams.
Should the tensions between school and democracy have been the main definers
of my work and of my sense of advocacy, this book would have never been written.
I would have kept laboring on the possibilities offered by this space and continued
telling my students how important it is to keep our democratic imagination alive
and to imagine a brighter future for all students. Increasingly, however, I under-
stood that the difficulties in advancing more equitable forms of education no longer
rested on the intrinsic challenges informing the very notion of education as a funda-
mental democratic endeavor but, rather, on addressing these challenges under new
private visions of the public. Siding with the democratic traditions of education that
conceptualize schools as government-sponsored public spaces working toward the
public good (Cochran-Smith 1991; Dewey 1916/1997; Freire 1994), I have always
taken for granted the publicness of public education and, consequently, the public-
ness of my own advocacy. I assumed, naively considering the current educational
landscape, that the only possible referents of our democratic imagination were the
notions of the public and the public good. I was willing to explore the multiple and
complex ways in which these referents are imperfect and, many times, problematic.
For all the uncertainties we face in education, the only undisputable assumption
that remained with me was the public ground of my imagination. My encounter
during the last decade with current educational policies that promote competition
and privatization proved this assumption wrong and convinced me that we can no
longer assume the publicness of public education or of our democratic imagination.
1 Introduction 3

Furthermore, this encounter has convinced me that the logic of the market so en-
thusiastically embraced in current policies has quietly, but powerfully, redefined the
notion of the public and the public good as private visions of education that render
issues of democracy irrelevant or confine these issues to the realm of the individual.
This redefinition is evident in the increasing presence of private companies in
education in highly industrialized countries such as the U.S., Britain or New Zea-
land and in the call of international organizations such as the World Bank to create
partnerships with private schools in countries with less economic resources (Ball
and Youdell 2009; Klees et al. 2012). The underlying premise of this increasing
presence is that private interests are legitimate public actors that work for the good
of the public. Less evident but very much in need of our attention are some of the
devastating consequences of current private views in education. As the following
three scenarios suggest, these views are characterized by a blatant disdain for the
public as the main referent for public education and a complete disregard for the
effects that their efforts to equate standardization and competition to quality and
democratic education have on teachers, on our understanding of the role of the state
in education, and how we imagine new ways of improving schools in low-income
districts.
Scenario 1- It is April, 2013 and I am teaching a week-long, intense graduate
course on curriculum to aspiring school administrators at a university in Santiago,
Chile. As in the previous courses that I have taught at this institution as a part of a
now 10-year long university partnership, the most recurring theme in class conversa-
tions is students’ frustration with the Chile’s emphasis on a standardized assessment
system. The expectations of the national curriculum have been so extensive and so
specific, and the consequences of the assessment process has impacted schools so
deeply, they argued, that their leadership roles as school leaders have been reduced
to produce good results in the national assessment system (SIMSE). While teaching
the course, I notice, as I have done in similar courses in the past, that these laments
are remarkably similar to the ones I hear from graduate students in the U.S.
Among these conversations this year, however, there is one specific incident nar-
rated by one of the students that becomes particularly relevant to me as I struggle
to understand the multiple spaces in which current visions of education embodying
the logic of the market leave their harmful mark on educators. A young elementary
school teacher imparted an emblematic classroom experience. As a fourth grade
teacher of English as a foreign language in a government subsidized school serving
predominantly low-income students, and as someone who believed that students’
engagement with the subject area is critical to the learning process, this teacher
purposefully used teaching methods that elicited students’ participation and interac-
tion. During a small group discussion in our seminar, she shared with us how her
principal showed a strong dissatisfaction with these teaching methods. He reminded
her that in order to achieve the expected results in the standardized national tests,
she should align her teaching to the school’s assessment goals by using direct in-
struction. Unwilling to completely change her teaching practices and wishing to
remain open to utilizing the space of resistance teachers have in their classroom, she
continued the use of participatory methodologies but she also implemented direct
4 E. Rodríguez

instruction when the principal and/or other school administrators visited her class.
She explained to her students that there would be different teaching activities in
the classroom. Some would demand their quiet attention and individual work, and
others would require them to be more interactive and participative. It was not too
long before she realized that, the principal, unannounced and furtively, observed
her through the classroom door. Of particular concern to her was the fact that her
students had also started noticing this act of surveillance and began modifying
their learning behaviors when detecting the principal’s presence. Furthermore, her
students, in unsolicited complicity, discretely signaled to her the presence of the
principal. There were tears in her eyes as she shared this story. The cause of her
sadness was not the methodological changes she was forced to implement or even
the danger of losing her job (she had already decided she would look for a different
school the following year). Rather, what caused her tears was the realization that by
continuing to utilize the teaching methods she felt would be more beneficial to her
students, she had also unintentionally taught her students to “lie” to the principal.
Her testimony reflected her willingness to play according to the current logic of
accountability and to engage in the methodological schizophrenia that would allow
her to maintain her teaching practices. The ethical responsibility she felt for the
spontaneous involvement of students in such schizophrenia, however, was some-
thing she could not endure.
Scenario 2- While teaching this course in Chile, I continued to follow, with dis-
may, the implementation of the new educational policies in Spain. Not surprisingly,
given the strong conservative views of the government in place in 2013, and the
country’s deep economic recession, the newspapers’ headlines reflected the all too
familiar budgetary cuts and the prediction that the new academic year would start
with less resources, fewer teachers, and a higher student/teacher ratio. Of particular
interest to me was the rationale used to foster proposed changes such as the imple-
mentation of two new national assessment tests, one to be taken after completing
middle-school and the other after finishing high-school, as a requirement to enter
college, and the raising of the GPA required to qualify for university scholarships.
The justification presented for these proposals was the need to create a culture of
“individual effort” ( la cultura del esfuerzo) that, according to the government,
youth no longer have. Only students who demonstrate a strong personal drive for
education, this rationale argued, should attend college and benefit from financial
scholarships. The fallacy of this rationale is not lost on people like me who ex-
perienced this “new” culture of individual effort as a part of the everyday life of
working-class families who counted on the efforts of their children to achieve the
monetary help the government was trying to considerably reduce. Nonetheless, this
fallacy worked as an enticing argument to move away from social equality and to
promote more elitist positions that would secure the social advantage of those who
have access to better education from birth. In the spirit of this reasoning, and despite
the signs of discontent among many Spaniards, the government compellingly rede-
fined success in education as a matter of individual effort. This redefinition renders
administration, structural, and policy issues completely irrelevant. Furthermore, it
effectively exonerates the responsibility of the state in this success by blaming stu-
dents for all the failures.
1 Introduction 5

Scenario 3- Returning from my trip to Chile to Philadelphia, the place I have

been calling home for over a decade, I read about the draconian budget cuts for the
next school year. I also read about the demand of the state of Pennsylvania that the
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the local teachers’ union, relinquish benefits
such as seniority in order for the Philadelphia district to receive state funds. Like
most school districts in large urban areas in the U.S., Philadelphia serves mostly
low-income students of color (55 % African Americans, 19 % Latinos, 14 % Cau-
casians, 8 % Asians/Pacific Islanders, 5 % Multiracial and 0.18 % Native Ameri-
cans, according to the district’s website on December, 2012). The recent history
of the schools in the city has been shaped by two distinctive features, namely, the
state-controlled management of the district and the large number of schools under
the management of private organizations, particularly charter schools. In 2001, and
after a confrontation with the former superintendent over his bold request for sub-
stantially increased state funds for schools, the state of Pennsylvania passed a law
by which the city schools were to be controlled, both financially and educationally,
by a committee of five people. Three of these members were to be nominated by the
state and the other two by the city of Philadelphia. This School Reform Commis-
sion (SRC), as this group was named, soon decided that the best way to address the
economic crisis in the district and to improve students’ learning outcomes was to
open the schools to private providers. This measure effectively made Philadelphia
the leading city in the movement toward privatization. Indeed, by December 2012,
according to the district’s website, 84 of Philadelphia’s 242 schools were charter
schools.
Always justified by the need to address the fiscal “crisis” of the district, this
trend continued through the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. In
more recent years and echoing the Obama administration’s support for charter
schools, this focus on privatization led to the opening of an increasing number of
these schools. In December, 2012, for example, the School Reform Commission re-
leased and endorsed the fiscal study it had commissioned to the Boston Consulting
Group. The results suggested massive closures of schools and management changes
for low-performing schools. While this decision was implemented, the School Re-
form Commission continued to allocate larger amounts of money to charter provid-
ers and predicted that 40 % of students in the city would attend charter schools by
2017. As I returned to Philadelphia, this budgetary crisis of unprecedented dimen-
sions had taken full shape and the school district’s superintendent announced the
closing of 24 schools. He unveiled a budgetary plan for the year 2013–2014 that he
himself described as “catastrophic” and that involved massive firing of teachers and
school staff (3700 employees were laid off by August 2013). It further involved the
prediction that in most schools the new academic year would start with fewer teach-
ers, no counselors, no administrative assistants, no vice-principals, and no hallway
aids. Of crucial interest to our reflection on how private interests have provided new
referents to our educational imagination is the observation that, besides the work of
local activist organizations, there has been no public uproar about the prospect of
educating students in Philadelphia in schools that question not only the very notion
of public education but, equally important, whether what they are offering could be
considered “education” in the first place.
6 E. Rodríguez

While thousands of miles apart and the product of very different historical forc-
es, these three scenarios imply that the logic of the market informing current edu-
cational policies has not only privatized the affiliation of many public schools but
has also changed the public referents that formerly grounded the notion of public
education. Rizvi and Lingard (2010) warn us that current educational policies are
neither homogenous nor do they apply in the same way in different political and
historical contexts. These three cases, nonetheless, suggest that many countries are
adopting private referents that make it increasingly difficult for teachers to claim
legitimacy for methodologies that reject the tyranny of standardized measurement,
that exonerate national governments for their responsibility of assuring the educa-
tional success of all students, and that offer disenfranchised students solutions based
almost exclusively on financial considerations. Taken together, these scenarios sug-
gest that our democratic commitment to education can reach only as far as private
visions of education are willing to imagine.
Unfortunately, my increasing awareness of the multiple ways in which the pub-
licness of public education has been redefined by private visions of teaching and as-
sessment, and by policies that have imprisoned our democratic imagination within
the logic of the market, was not matched by my ability to address this challenge in
my professional life. Indeed, I despaired and wondered how I could continue advo-
cating for public education when its contribution to democracy no longer has a clear
referent to the public. I increasingly feared that by advocating for public education
at a time this institution drinks, both conceptually and functionally from the private
well, I was also unwillingly supporting a conception of education rooted outside
of the public realm. Eventually, however, this fear led me back to Freire’s (1994)
understanding of hope and provided me with a renewed understanding of his man-
date to never refrain from exercising our democratic imagination. Conceptualizing
hope as an ontological need and as the engine to advance more equitable visions of
the future, Freire reminded me that “[o]ne of the tasks of the progressive educators,
through a serious, correct, political analysis, is to unveil opportunities for hope, no
matter what the obstacles may be” (p. 3).
This book was written as a response to this mandate to hope by arguing for the
need to reclaim the publicness of public education. More specifically, this text is in-
tended as an invitation to contest private notions of education and to find new public
grounds for our democratic imagination. This invitation is extended by presenting
11 public schools, most of them unknown in the educational literature, that have
worked, or are still working with disenfranchised communities and that have pub-
licly hoped for a better future for their students. The common denominator among
all these schools is their pledge to find new pedagogical and curricular paths to
pursue more opportunities for the students and communities they serve or have
served in public spaces or with a public vocation. While the 11 schools share a deep
commitment to empower students traditionally marginalized, and an understanding
that public education is and will always be a complex task that requires our finest
educational thoughts, each tells a unique story narrated in the specificity of the
school’s history and culture. For example, these schools have existed or currently
exist in political and social contexts as different as: the current rapid moderniza-
1 Introduction 7

tion and urbanization of Hong Kong, the indigenous movement in Bolivia prior
to the 1952 national revolution, the search for a new democratic national identity
in the Turkey of the 1940s, and the current economic consequences of neoliberal
economic policies in Argentina. Located in different parts of the world across three
continents, the schools also serve, or have served, a variety of social groups such as,
multicultural communities in London and the U.S., rural working-class students in
Italy, Navajo students on an Indigenous reservation in the U.S., and peasants in rural
Mexico. The singularities of each school and the contexts in which they arise invite
the reader to make each chapter in this book an exciting educational destination and
an opportunity to learn more about the particular challenges and possibilities that
shape each of the schools’ dreams.
As edifying and important as each of these narratives is, this book aspires to be
much more than a collection of educational stories. At a very basic level, this book
wishes to intentionally challenge the current educational discourses’ disdain for the
notion of the public. By purposefully presenting these 11 public schools, this book
openly contests these discourses’ disregard for public schools as places of hope
and explicitly reclaims these institutions as legitimate sites of democratic imagina-
tion. By presenting a detailed account of each of the schools’ hopes and struggles,
this text also intends to present an analysis of curriculum and pedagogy as an ex-
plicit reminder of the variety of ways in which schools can deliver their democratic
commitment. To this end, this book wishes to be viewed as an antidote to current
simplistic and homogenous market-based solutions that claim validity across all
educational contexts. At a more general level, this book is an invitation to imagine a
more hopeful future for public education, and specifically, for those easily forgotten
in our dreams for a better society. At this level and paraphrasing the motto of the
2002 World Social Forum, this book is an invitation to believe that, “other ways of
thinking about education are possible.”
To define the conceptual parameters of this invitation to (re)imagine the public
grounds of public education, there are a few clarifications this book would like to
make from the outset. First, while this is a book of hope, there is nothing naïve
about this call. Those of us who believe, like Freire (1993), that “one of the tasks
that education can accomplish is to make our democratic process more consistent”
(p. 123), know very well that there is no room for wishful thinking in this proposi-
tion. Hope is the indispensable tool to our democratic visions and, consequently, a
political responsibility for all educators who share this vision. After all, as Wrigley
(2003) states, “[t]he desire to improve education arises naturally from our engage-
ment with the future” (p. 1). But this text is fully aware of the many and complex
ways in which schools have recreated social inequality (Anyon 2006; Lipman 2011;
Orfield et al. 2002–2003), have made identity a painful struggle for many disenfran-
chised students (Perry et al. 2003; Tatum 1997; Willis 1981), or have undermined
the power of poor communities in education (Gordon and Nocon 2008; Rogers
2006; Valenzuela 1999). This book’s call to (re)imagine public education by reflect-
ing on the work of the schools it features, therefore, should not be understood in any
way as an endorsement of the democratic shortcomings of public education or of the
belief that public schools are naturally positioned to advance democracy. Rather, it
8 E. Rodríguez

should be read as a call to rethink the future of public education in spite of and with
an understanding of such shortcomings. In this regard, this call transcends these cri-
tiques of public education, not because they are not present but, more importantly,
because we need to find hope beyond them. In this exercise, this text is inspired by
Freire’s (1994) ruling to make hope concrete and historical. It is further inspired
by Giroux’s (2004) notion of “educated hope” that links the language of critique
and the language of possibilities by defining hope as the political tool that should
“provide a link, however transient, provisional, and contextual, between vision and
critique on the one hand, and engagement and transformation on the other” (p. 39).
Second, in the presentation of the schools in the upcoming chapters, the terms
curriculum and pedagogy are intertwined and, at times, presented as interchange-
able. There are two main reasons for this. First, new theoretical conceptions of cur-
riculum have deeply challenged the fallacious dichotomy that defined curriculum
as program of instruction and pedagogies as methodologies and have embraced a
notion of curriculum as a discursive text and as a deliberative process that blurs
the boundaries between these two concepts (Alba et al. 2000; Hendry 2011; Silva
2001; Slattery 1995). Second, the description of the schools is guided by the un-
derstanding of pedagogy as a political act (Beyer and Apple 1998; Freire 1993;
Schultz 2008). Because each chapter describes its school’s curriculum as it was/
is implemented, what Cuban (1993) calls “taught curriculum,” in this text the term
curriculum is understood as “pedagogies in action.”
Third, this book makes no claim to be a comprehensive text of pedagogical inno-
vation. Consequently, it assumes neither a higher pedagogical value for the schools
it presents nor that these 11 schools are the only ones worthy of consideration.
Rather, the schools included in Pedagogies and Curriculums to (Re)imagine Public
Education intend to function as evocative examples of the many ways schools have
tried, and still try, to empower socially marginalized communities in very different
historical, social, and cultural contexts. To this end, the schools included in this text
are presented as a tapestry of pedagogies of resistance and hope and as testimonies
to the numerous ways in which public education has served and imagined more
democratic visions of education.
The fourth important clarification is that, while inclusive in nature, this text is
also fully aware of the important absences involved in the selection of the schools.
The schools featured in the following chapters were included in the book because
they were situated in one (or several) of the following sociocultural and educational
dimensions: North/South, urban/rural, current/past, indigenous/non-indigenous,
racially homogenous/racially diverse, top-down curriculum/school-based changes.
Despite the text’s efforts to provide an inclusive cultural and historical perspective,
however, there are many educational contexts and histories that this book was un-
able to include. Geographically, the absences include schools from Africa, Austra-
lia, and New Zealand. Asia is, unwillingly, underrepresented with just one school.
Also absent are schools working with populations that represent the geographies
of dislocation characteristic of our global landscape such as schools working with
Latino, Asian, and Muslin students in the U.S., schools teaching immigrant students
with strong colonial histories in different countries in Europe, schools for females
1 Introduction 9

in countries with unequal gender access to education, or schools around the world
receiving both national and international students displaced by recent neoliberal
policies. I appeal to the reader to regard such omissions as acknowledgment of the
impossibility of including all the educational realities that deserve a place in books
like this. I also appeal to the reader to see these omissions not as an attempt to si-
lence the contexts and communities that have not been included, but as invitation to
continue the conversation generated in this book with these communities.
Fifth, Pedagogies and Curriculums to (Re)imagine Public Education is neither
a comparative nor a historical analysis of the schools presented in the text. While
every chapter provides a historical and educational analysis of the contexts in which
these schools were/are situated, the book does not attempt to engage in any histori-
cal or comparative analysis of the schools. To this end, the reader is urged to disre-
gard any perceived historical sequence in the text. Likewise, the reader is advised
not to construe the number of schools that are no longer in existence as an invitation
to search in the past for answers to current educational challenges. As suggested
above, schools were not selected for the historical questions they face(d), as impor-
tant as these questions are, but for the range of insights they provide us to redraw
the boundaries of our public imagination.
Lastly, it is important to clarify that this text does not entertain the progres-
sive/alternative versus traditional education dichotomy that informs many analyses
of educational change and curriculum inquiry (Hendry 2011; Weiler 2004). While
this is a useful analytical dichotomy in many educational texts, the selection of the
schools for this project was not based on how alternative, how progressive, or how
radical they were/are. Rather, the schools featured in this text were chosen consider-
ing their potential to present different educational landscapes, and therefore, their
potential to push our educational imagination.

Outline of Chapters

The call to (re)imagine public education by finding new public grounds for public
schools will be developed in thirteen chapters. Chapter 2, Reclaiming Schools as
Public Sites for Democratic Imagination, lays the theoretical framework for the
book and attempts to present a discursive analysis of the current process of priva-
tization endorsed by current educational policies. This chapter argues that this pro-
cess has silently but efficiently privatized our educational imagination. Based on
this argument, it offers the notion of public schools as publicly imagined as a useful
tool to reclaim public schools as legitimate places to enact our democratic dreams
and to conceptualize them as socially precious sites for collective visions. This no-
tion, this chapter further argues, also allows us to reclaim curriculum and pedagogy
as powerful educational instruments in pursuing these visions.
The following chapters narrate the stories of 11 different schools. All the narra-
tives are followed by an “in conversation” section in which the author(s) articulates
10 E. Rodríguez

some explicit connections between the school they present and the current task of
(re)imagining public education.
In Chap. 3, The Ayllu-school: Bolivia 1931–1940, Rodríguez and Arispe chron-
icle the short-lived experience of the Ayllu School in the Warisata region in the
Bolivian’s highlands. Founded in 1931 by Elizardo Pérez, a teacher and intellectual
searching for an indigenous community to house a pedagogical project he envi-
sioned as a new model of indigenous education, and Avelino Siñani, an indigenous
leader who persuaded other members of the community to believe in this project,
the Ayllu-school was built by the Warisata’s peasants and became an icon for indig-
enous education in the country that lasts until this day. Grounded on the indigenous
traditions and social practices, the school became a critical part of the community’s
political organization. It also developed a pedagogy rooted in the indigenous’ un-
derstanding of learning by working that pursued the self-sustainment and economic
growth of the community.
Chapter 4 recounts the story of Rough Rock, the first contemporary American
Indian community-controlled school. Established in 1966 in the heart of the Navajo
Nation, Rough Rock was the first school to have an all-Navajo governing board
and to teach in and through the Native language. The chapter discusses the school’s
early programs in culturally-based education and Navajo community control as well
as its exemplary bilingual-bicultural initiative. It further discusses the importance
of the school as a model of American Indian self-determination and how it paved
the way for some of the most significant federal Indian education policies of the
twentieth century. The chapter concluded by reflecting on the current situation at
Rough Rock, its efforts to sustain and revitalize the Navajo language, and the larger
lessons the Rough Rock experience teaches.
In Chap. 5, Moore describes the attempt of the English department at Brondes-
bury and Kilburn High School, a school in London, UK, to develop more linguisti-
cally and culturally inclusive forms of curricula and assessment for bidialectal stu-
dents. Capitalizing on Basil Bernstein’s understanding of competence approaches
to curriculum, assessment and pedagogy that privileges the presence (as opposed to
absences) of knowledge in students’ forms of expressions, this chapter narrates the
department’s initiative to accommodate non-standard English speaking students in
the formal examination systems in a way that valued these students’ creativity and
critical insights. This account is contextualized against the current central education
policy in England, which, Moore suggests, promotes the return to traditional, and
fundamentally exclusive, approaches to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.
Chapter 6 narrates the story of Arthurdale, a school in a resettlement commu-
nity for miners in West Virginia during the 1930s that was a landmark in bringing
Deweyan ideals of progressive education to bear upon an impoverished community
trying to revitalize the lives of the victims of economic collapse. The school’s cur-
riculum focused on ongoing life of the emerging community and offered a rich and
humane education in which collective problem solving was the essence of demo-
cratic learning and life. This chapter describes the context in which this pedagogical
experience originated and gathered the support of important political figures such
as Eleanor Roosevelt, emphasizing the school’s goals and democratic possibilities.
1 Introduction 11

This chapter further analyzes the wider contradictions in community-centered pro-

gressive pedagogy which contributed to the closing down of the school only 2 years
after its foundation.
In Chap. 7, Mendez documents the story of the Bachillarato IMPA, a middle
school in Buenos Aires, Argentina, located in a worker-operated factory. Contex-
tualized against the neoliberal policies that took many companies into bankruptcy
and the movement of “recovered factories” that led to workers’ ownership of many
of these companies, Mendez explains the foundation of this school as the product
of a successful collaboration among the factory’s workers who saw the need for the
school and provided a physical home for it, the movement of recovered factories
that supported this initiative, and a university-based research organization that pro-
vided the teachers. The first of the many schools now operating in other recovered
factories, the Bachillerato IMPA provides a middle school degree to both students
in the neighborhood and workers in the factory attending the school. Paralleling
the operating principles of the movement of recovered factories, one of the unique
pedagogical features of this school is the centrality of the assembly as the chief
decision-making body where teachers and students discuss and decide on all major
educational issues.
Chapter 8 visits a single-room in Barbiana, a mountainous rural community in
Italy in the 1950s. Widely known in Europe as an icon of class-based pedagogy,
as Navas tells us, this school was founded and taught by Father Milani, a Catho-
lic priest who was sent to this remote community as a penance for his left-wing
ideology. Realizing the virtual lack of access to public schools of his parishioners
and believing that Italian peasants needed education to gain access to the symbolic
power of the ruling classes, Father Milani started a school that imparted all levels
of formal education and provided students with a rich curriculum. As Navas further
illustrates in this chapter, language was the prioritized subject and critical literacy
was the school’s predominant pedagogical practice.
In Chap. 9 our travels take us to Cifteler, a town in the new Republic of Turkey
in the 1930s and 1940s. Gokalp recounts how this school was the first of almost
two dozen boarding schools known as the Village Institutes that existed for over a
decade and that explicitly aimed at educating the mostly rural and illiterate popula-
tions of the country as the modernized citizens of the newly established republic.
This goal, as Gokalp explains, was paved by many challenges, including the lack
of teachers willing to live in rural areas and the need to change formal education
to modernize the economic production in the villages. Like the subsequent Vil-
lage Institutes, Cifteler responded to these challenges by implementing a pedagogy
based on the notions of education for work, and learning by doing that integrated the
school’s academic curriculum with the villages’ economic needs. Intentionally, this
pedagogy provided many students with the professional training to become future
teachers in other rural communities.
In Chap. 10, Poon and Lin chronicle the recent comprehensive restructuring in
curriculum, learning materials, instructional practices, and assessment in HKRSS,
a secondary school in a working-class community in Hong Kong. As described by
Poon and Lin, these changes were undertaken by the school as a consequence of
12 E. Rodríguez

its commitment to developing an inclusive curriculum to accommodate the needs

of a large number of special education students. In the process of developing such
curriculum, Poon and Lin recount how the school moved away from practices
of teaching in isolation and embraced a philosophy of education based on shar-
ing and collaboration among teachers in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy, and
assessment.
Chapter 11 takes us to an innovative pedagogical experience in a rural commu-
nity in Mexico. Narrated by Rincón-Gallardo, this chapter illustrates the curriculum
and pedagogies implemented in Los Talleres, a fictional school representing the
over 350 small schools operated by the Post-primary Project between 1996 and
2003. Rincón-Gallardo, a member of the national leadership in this federal project
for 4 years, describes the story of this school by highlighting one of the unique
features of this federal program, namely, the promotion of independent learning
through a tutorial relationship between the instructor and the learner.
In Chap. 12, Anand recounts the efforts of the English department at Montclair
High School in New Jersey, U.S. This school located in an integrated community,
both in terms of class and race, implemented a multicultural curriculum in the 1980s
and 1990s. As narrated by this author, these school’s efforts energized the depart-
ment and the community’s commitment to bring about racial justice through cur-
riculum change and on a pedagogical project that placed multiculturalism at the
center of teaching. These efforts further inspired other changes in the school such as
the exploration of issue of power and culture by both teachers and students, the de-
tracking of the ninth-grade school curriculum, and the offering of required course
on multicultural literature in this grade.
Chapter 13 tells the story of La Nostra Escola Comarcal in Valencia, Spain.
Founded by a group of parents in 1973 when Spain was still under the dictatorship
of Francisco Franco, the school was intentionally established as a cooperative to as-
sure a democratic organization and to involve all the parents in the decision-making
process. While it started as an early childhood education, today the school also of-
fers elementary and secondary education. Pedagogically, the school was committed
to the implementation of active pedagogies, to co-education, to learn from local
culture, and to affirm as well as claim the identity of the local community and of
Valenciano, the regional language, as the main language of instruction.
Chapter 14, Public Schools as Publicly Imagined, concludes this edited col-
lection by reflecting on the schools presented in the previous 11 chapters and by
arguing that the pedagogies and curriculums implemented in these schools offer
us the possibility of finding new public grounds for our public imagination. More
specifically, this chapter contends that these schools allow us to think of public
schools as historically specific sites where collective visions become explicit peda-
gogical processes intending to improve not only the lives of those they serve but,
equally important, the larger community that has anchored these students’ identi-
ties and futures. To this end, the chapter considers these schools an illustration of
the notion of public schools as publicly imagined as articulated in the introduc-
tory chapters, and argues for the need to (re)imagine public education along these
lines.
1 Introduction 13

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Educational Leadership, 60(4), 16–20.
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Encarna Rodríguez, PhD, is associate professor of education in the Department of Educational

Leadership at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, United States. She is the author of Neoliber-
alismo, Educación y Género: Análisis Crítico de la Reforma Educativa Española [neoliberalism,
education and gender: A critical analysis of the Spanish education reform] (Madrid: La Piqueta).
Her research on neoliberalism and education has been published in journals such as Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Revista de Educación, or Journal of
Pedagogy. Her research on internationalizing teacher education has been published in Teacher
Education Quarterly and Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly.
Chapter 2
Reclaiming Schools as Public Sites for
Democratic Imagination

Encarna Rodríguez

Current Discourses of Education and the Privatization

of the Educational Imagination

As someone who believes, like Meier (2002), that schools have the democratic re-
sponsibility of dreaming for a better future for all our students, I have been deeply
troubled by the nature of current educational policies around the world. Ideologi-
cally, my chief concern has been the damage that these policies have inflicted on
the very notion of the public by embracing, both enthusiastically and unproblemati-
cally, the logic of the market as the panacea for public education (Ball 2009; Broom
2011; Klenowski 2009). This concern finds additional justification when examining
the political significance of the contemporary infatuation with market-based school
reforms. As Rizvi and Lingard (2010) explain, the widespread adoption of this logic
of the market is neither a phenomenon germane to education nor one neatly con-
tained within the limits of national states. Rather, these authors suggest that the
strong presence of the market in educational policies needs to be conceptualized as
a part of the global neoliberal imaginary that has informed public policies around
the world in the last two decades, an imaginary that promotes a vision of society
grounded in individualism and competition and that consequently offers the princi-
ples of the market as the best solution for any governmental problem. These authors
are quick to warn us that this imaginary does not affect all political or educational
systems the same way and that public governmental systems always filter new poli-
cies through the national cultural and political traditions. Despite these national
and local differences, however, these authors explain current educational policies
around the world as sharing an undeniable reliance on the rationale of the market.
In their estimation, “there is an unmistakable global trend toward a convergence in
thinking about [neoliberal] educational values” (p. 72), values that they identify as

E. Rodríguez ()
Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, USA
e-mail: erodrigu@sju.edu
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015 15
E. Rodríguez (ed.), Pedagogies and Curriculums to (Re)imagine Public Education,
Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 3,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-490-0_2
16 E. Rodríguez

the underlying principles for the widespread support for school privatization and
for the adoption of education reforms that prioritize accountability and efficiency
over democracy and equality. The forces spreading these neoliberal values, Rizvi
and Lingard further explain, are not just national governments eager to espouse
educational policies that promise efficient solutions to the pressing need to prepare
young citizens to compete in a global economy. As they note, “[o]rganizations such
as the OECD, the UE, APEC, UNESCO and the World Bank have become major
sites for the organization of knowledge about education, and have created a cajoling
discourse of ‘imperatives of the global economy’ for education” (p. 79).
Pedagogically, my main concern with these policies has been their lack of demo-
cratic imagination. A large body of educational literature has compellingly argued
that educators and schools need to ground their educational commitment to democ-
racy in an earnest awareness of the multiple and complex ways in which educational
systems produce and reproduce social inequality (Anyon 2006; Biesta 2007; Gor-
don and Nocon 2008; Perry et al. 2003; Tabulawa 2003; Valenzuela 1999). Despite
the soundness of this argument, however, current educational policies work with a
surprisingly anachronistic pedagogical simplicity. Instead of advancing Dewey’s
(1916/1997) understanding of the individual process of learning as a crucial demo-
cratic space that should also enrich society and should, therefore, work toward the
common good (Broom 2011), for example, current educational policies have mostly
ignored issues of curriculum and pedagogy (Nordtveit 2012; Rizvi and Lingard
2010). Broom (2011) explains that in the logic of these reforms and their emphasis
on efficiency and the individual, “teaching is narrowed to individualistic and com-
petitive market ideology, and encased in the value of consumption and competition”
(p. 143). Not surprisingly, given this emphasis, current educational policies reject
ideological and cultural specificity. Far from recognizing the relations of power in-
volved in the process of schooling, the discourses that articulate these policies claim
political neutrality. The principle of efficiency, these discourses reason, makes any
practice that achieves this goal inherently good. Likewise, rather than embracing
the call to contextualize teaching in the deep and respectful understanding of the
local and cultural knowledges of the communities served by schools, the teaching
practices embraced by these policies are increasingly homogenous and removed
from any social context. In the logic of these reforms, achievement rests on motivat-
ing students and on teaching them to succeed in the assessment system so there is
no need for cultural specificity.
By and in themselves, these ideological and pedagogical concerns are not new.
As critical educators have successfully unveiled, public schools have articulated
dominant conservative ideologies in many ways (Apple 2001; Cuban 2004; Mc-
Intyre 2000; Willis 1981). We also know that with the exception of a few historical
moments or geographical pockets and despite the possibilities for social mobility
they have offered, public schools have been particularly reluctant to become the
democratic institution we wish(ed) for. When framed within the global neoliberal
imaginary that requires schools to embrace and prioritize standardization and com-
petition above issues of democracy and social equality (Rizvi and Lingard 2010),
2 Reclaiming Schools as Public Sites for Democratic Imagination 17

however, these concerns appear as a powerful warning of the fragile status of the
publicness of public education. When framed this way, these concerns no longer
refer only to the well-known inherent difficulties for schools to realize their demo-
cratic potential but also to the damage that current policies are inflicting on our
democratic imagination. Against the neoliberal landscape that worships the indi-
vidual and that disdains the collective as the main referent for democracy, these
concerns suggest that what is really at stake in these policies is not just the risk of
weakening the relationship between education and democracy, as important as this
is, but, more importantly, our own ability to imagine this relationship within the
public referents that current policies are so efficiently erasing.
At a first glance, it may seem that the main challenge to exercise this kind of
imagination may be explained by the rapidly increasing number of educational
spaces that operate under the logic of the private. As schools are increasingly priva-
tized and the involvement of the business sector considerably expands to school
tasks that have been traditionally in the hands of educators such as learning out-
comes’ assessment or professional development, it is evident that public spaces in
education, by whatever definition we apply to this term, have been greatly reduced
(Fabricant and Fine 2013; Reid 2002; Watkins 2011). Likewise, schools and educa-
tors working in public schools are increasingly required to work as private institu-
tions, that is to say, to embrace teaching and organizational practices rooted in the
principles of the market rather than in democratic traditions of schooling (Ball and
Youdell 2009; Hopmann 2008; Luke 2006; Meier and Wood 2004).
Taking a closer look, however, the challenge to exercise our democratic imagina-
tion seems to be mostly an ideological problem defined by the way current educa-
tional policies have bounded our imagination to the private. As public schools are
increasingly asked to follow the logic of the market, as they are asked to subjugate
pedagogy to efficiency, or as they are required to prioritize students’ outcomes over
the democratic processes that should lead to these outcomes, they are, in essence,
being asked to abdicate the educational legacy that has anchored democratic vi-
sions in education and to dream within the limits of what private interests can offer.
Likewise, current educational discourses are asking both educators and the public
to relinquish any hopes for public schools to be agents of change and to entrust the
social aspirations of schools to private visions of education. In imposing these de-
mands, educational policies are requiring schools to reject the fundamental propo-
sition that public education is to serve the public good and that “the nature and
content of education ought to be—must be—decided by public conversation, not
just by a collection of individual choices” (Covaleskie 2007, p. 32). The analysis
of two current documentaries, Waiting for “Superman” (Guggenheim 2010) and La
Educación Prohibida [prohibitive education] (Doin 2012), illustrate the power of
these discourses and the consequent delegitimization of public schools as sites of
democratic imagination.
Released in 2010 in the U.S. and directed by Davis Guggenheim, the first of
these documentaries, Waiting for “Superman,” narrates the stories of five students,
Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, as they anxiously await the response
18 E. Rodríguez

to their application to charter schools. Four of these students are students of color,
three of whom attend urban public schools and one who attends a Catholic school.
The fifth student is White and attends a suburban school. As the film tells the stories
of these young men and women, it also presents a diagnosis of the main maladies of
public education in U.S. In the estimation of the movie and of the educational ex-
perts whom it features, the root of the troubles of public education is the poor qual-
ity of teachers. This assessment is presented through the testimony of experts such
as Erik Hanushek, an educational policy analyst and Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institute of Stanford University who states that, “[i]f in fact we could just eliminate
the bottom 6–10 % of our teachers and replace them with an average teacher, we
could bring the average U.S. student up to the level of Finland, which is at the
top of the world today.” The documentary bases this assessment on two intimately
linked arguments. The first targets the notoriously bureaucratic structure that char-
acterizes public schools. It is this malfunctioning structure, the film contends, that
keeps bad teachers in schools even when some schools, such as those depicted in
the documentary to explain the notion of dropout factories, have dramatically failed
students like the ones featured in the movie. The second argument presents teach-
ers’ unions as the main obstacle to real change in schools. According to the movie,
these organizations have highly profited from the schools’ bureaucratic systems and
have stubbornly insisted on defending the tenure system that has kept bad teachers
in schools. Consistent with this analysis, the film proposes to endorse schools free
from bureaucracy and teachers’ unions, in this case charter schools, as the solution
for public education. The film makes multiple references to this solution by present-
ing the testimony of multiple experts and leaders of private organizations and char-
ter schools who see competition and efficiency as the central tenants of education.
With the exception of Randi Weingarten, the president of The American Federation
of Teachers, who appears only for a few minutes, the film makes no allusion to suc-
cessful public schools nor does it make any attempt to include the voices of those
educational experts who have long understood issues of teacher quality and school
bureaucracy as fundamental elements in their advocacy for public education.
As persuasively as the argument in favor of charter schools is articulated
throughout the movie, the most compelling call to endorse private visions of educa-
tion comes through the emotional conundrum the audience experiences at the end of
the film. In these last scenes, the film intentionally sustains the viewer’s loyalty to
the hopes that the families of these five students have placed on charter schools by
chronicling the public lottery process in which the numbers from a pool determine
the accepted applications. As these students and their families enact their desires for
more educational possibilities, and as they anxiously hold the number they expect to
be called next, the audience is asked to anticipate the feelings of relief or consterna-
tion that these families would display while learning about their educational fates.
This emotional alliance with the families is undoubtedly, one of the most successful
ideological propositions of the movie. The emotions in these last minutes are so
powerful that even the thought of imagining public schools as possible receivers
of these children’s hopes seemed like an act of betrayal. If we really care about
these families, this documentary implies, we need to believe in charter schools as
2 Reclaiming Schools as Public Sites for Democratic Imagination 19

the best opportunity for these children and to let the magic of the private guide
our educational aspirations. As Stern (2012) illustrates when reflecting on why his
own students in a graduate educational policy class cried in these last scenes, the
audience is asked to enter a “neoliberal Utopian space” (p. 394), a space free from
the constraints of the social and from the messiness of education as a democratic
endeavor. Ultimately, and as the title of the movie indicates, the audience is com-
pelled to see the charter’s vision of education and the logic therein represented as
the educational Superman that would secure the academic achievement of not only
these five students but of the multitude of Anthonies, Franciscos, Daysys, Biancas
and Emilies across the world.
Shortly after its release, many educational theorists raised numerous and impor-
tant critiques to the analyses and solutions offered within this documentary (Ravitch
2010; Swalwell and Apple 2011). Ravitch (2010), for example, explains that the
film conveniently leaves out crucial information such as the fact that students’ aca-
demic scores in non-unionized states are no higher than in unionized states. She
also contends that the documentary ignores studies on charter schools such as the
one conducted by the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes in 2009 docu-
menting that only one out of five charter schools performed better than their public
counterparts and that almost 40 % of charter schools performed worse than public
schools. Despite the significance of these critiques within the educational commu-
nity familiar with education policy analysis, however, the movie has been positively
received by the public at large and has been regarded as a bold and truthful account
of education in the U.S. This warm reception by the public suggests that this text has
also been an important symbolic medium to channel the social hopes for public edu-
cation in U.S. away from public schools and closer to private visions of education.
This message is hard to miss in the movie. By refusing to present public schools or
educational theorists who have worked with the democratic traditions in education,
the documentary could safely portray public schools as beyond hope. Once this
fact was established, it could also safely present people like Bill Gates and other
business-oriented educational leaders as the guarantors of our hopes. Portrayed as
the only ones with enough determination and knowledge to assure these hopes, this
movie identifies people like Bill Gates or founders of charter schools of the world
as the real saviors of public education. This call to relinquish our hope for public
schools and to entrust our democratic imagination to private visions of education
is poignantly illustrated by the testimony of one these founders who states, “25
years ago there was no proof that something else worked. Well, now we know what
works. We know that is just a lie that disadvantaged kids can’t learn. We know that
if you apply the right accountability standards you can get fabulous results so, why
would we do something else?”
The second documentary, La Educación Prohibida (Doin 2012), was released in
Spanish in 2012 as an exclusive online documentary and was directed by German
Doin, a young professional whose only claim to education is his interest to make
schools a more interesting place. The bases of the film are a series of reflections of
numerous educators in Latin America and Spain on the role of schools. As in the
case of Waiting for “Superman,” the director explicitly states that this was not a film
20 E. Rodríguez

against public schools. Also as in Waiting for “Superman,” any viewer familiar with
the democratic traditions of education poignantly feels the pressure to surrender to
the democratic imagination that only the private seems to be able to achieve. The
main problem with schools, according to this film, is that they repress students’
autonomy and initiative. The testimonies of the experts in the documentary, inter-
estingly, most of them from private schools, leave no doubt that schools have been
very authoritarian and damaging for students as individuals and have greatly cur-
tailed their creative possibilities. The solution offered to this problem is the imple-
mentation of active and innovative methodologies that focus on the individual and
that nurture their cognitive and emotional abilities.
Taken at face value, it is difficult to resist the persuasion of this argument and
easy to understand the rapid popularity of this film in Spanish-speaking countries.
After all, the education reforms in most of these countries are justified by the need
to educate more democratic citizens who must be able to understand the dangerous
connections between the state apparatus and authoritarianism (Silva 1998; Varela
2007). In terms of our educational hopes, however, the film clearly suggests that
we look for the democratic possibilities of these methodologies in private schools.
Those of us familiar with the ideological critique of child-centered pedagogies
know that public schools are not a natural habitat to this autonomous and criti-
cal-minded individual (Carter 2010; Rodríguez 2011; Tabulawa 2003; Walkerdine
1984). Rather, as these critiques imply, child-centered pedagogies that dismiss the
historicity and subjectivity of students, such as the ones presented in this documen-
tary, promote a fictional idea of a universal and intrinsically democratic individual
who seems to exist only in elitist private schools. The movie clearly channeled the
viewer’s imagination in this direction by filtering the argument for more democratic
methodologies exclusively through private visions of education. In this case, the
views of the private educational organizations that sponsored the film and which
perspectives were represented in the testimonies of the people interviewed by the
documentary makers prevent an appreciation of public schooling.
It would be unfair to think that these two documentaries were conceived with
the explicit purpose of dismantling public education. In fact, both directors have
strongly rejected such arguments when presented with them. When looking at these
movies discursively, however, it becomes evident that these two texts skillfully ar-
ticulate current educational discourses’ invitation to ignore public schools as sites
of educational imagination and to look for innovative school changes in other ven-
ues. Educationally, the grounds for this invitation are highly questionable. Public
schooling, for all its shortcomings, has been indeed the home of some important
democratic and socially responsible visions of education (Meier 2002; Sahlberg
2011; Apple and Beane 1995; Fielding and Moss 2011; Wrigley et al. 2012b). The
positive reception of the two films, despite some of the critiques they received,
suggests that they are powerful media texts that direct our attention away from the
democratic potential of public schools. Of particular importance in this regard is
the fact that this message to redirect our attention to private universes is sent from
political sources traditionally opposed to the forces of privatization. The political
right’s advocacy for private solutions is hardly surprising. But these two documen-
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 And who will sit in Nóvgorod?”
There stepped forward Diví Murza, son of Ulán:
“Listen, our lord, Crimea’s tsar!
You, our lord, shall sit in stone-built Moscow,
And your son in Vladímir,
And your nephew in Súzdal,
And your relative in Zvenígorod,
And let the equerry hold old Ryazán,
But to me, O lord, grant Nóvgorod:
There, in Nóvgorod, lies my luck.”
The voice of the Lord called out from heaven:
“Listen, you dog, Crimea’s tsar!
Know you not the tsarate of Muscovy?
There are in Moscow seventy Apostles,[117]
Besides the three Sanctified;
And there is in Moscow still an orthodox Tsar.”
And you fled, you dog, Crimea’s tsar,
Not over the highways, nor the main road,
Nor following the black standard.

THE SONG OF THE PRINCESS KSÉNIYA BORÍSOVNA [118]

There weepeth a little bird,

A little white quail:
“Alas, that I so young must grieve!
They wish to burn the green oak,
To destroy my little nest,
To kill my little ones,
To catch me, quail.”
In Moscow the Princess weepeth:
“Alas that I so young must grieve!
For there comes to Moscow the traitor,
Gríshka Otrépev Rozstríga,[119]
Who wants to take me captive,
And having captured make me a nun,
To send me into the monastery.
But I do not wish to become a nun,
To go into a monastery:
I shall keep my dark cell open,
To look at the fine fellows.
O our beautiful corridors!
Who will walk over you
After our tsarian life
And after Borís Godunóv?
O our beautiful palace halls!
Who will be sitting in you
After our tsarian life
And after Borís Godunóv?”
And in Moscow the Princess weepeth,
The daughter of Borís Godunóv:
“O God, our merciful Saviour!
Wherefore is our tsardom perished,—
Is it for father’s sinning,
Or for mother’s not praying?
And you beloved palace halls!
Who will rule in you,
After our tsarian life?
Fine stuffs of drawn lace!—
Shall we wind you around the birches?
Fine gold-worked towels!
Shall we throw you into the woods?
Fine earrings of hyacinth
Shall we hang you on branches,
After our tsarian life,
After the reign of our father,
Glorious Borís Godunóv?
Wherefore comes to Moscow Rozstríga,
And wants to break down the palaces,
And to take me, princess, captive,
And to send me to Ustyúzhna Zheléznaya,
To make me, princess, a nun,
To place me behind a walled garden?
 Why must I grieve,
As they take me to the dark cell,
And the abbess gives me her blessing?”

THE RETURN OF PATRIARCH FILARÉT TO MOSCOW[120]

The tsarate of Muscovy was happy

And all the holy Russian land.
Happy was the sovereign, the orthodox Tsar,
The Grand Duke Mikhaíl Fedórovich,
For he was told that his father had arrived,
His father Filarét Nikítich,
From the land of the infidel, from Lithuania.
He had brought back with him many princes and boyárs,
He had also brought the boyár of the Tsar,
Prince Mikhaíl Borísovich Sheyn.
There had come together many princes, boyárs, and dignitaries,
In the mighty tsarate of Muscovy:
They wished to meet Filarét Nikítich
Outside the famous stone-built Moscow.
’Tis not the red sun in its course,—
’Tis the orthodox Tsar that has gone out,
To meet his father dear,
Lord Filarét Nikítich.
With the Tsar went his uncle,
Iván Nikítich the boyár.—
“The Lord grant my father be well,
My father, lord Filarét Nikítich.”
They went not into the palace of the Tsar,
They went into the cathedral of the Most Holy Virgin,
To sing an honourable mass.
And he blessed his beloved child:
“God grant the orthodox Tsar be well,
Grand Duke Mikhaíl Fedórovich!
And for him to rule the tsarate of Muscovy
And the holy Russian land.

FOOTNOTES:

[116] Having destroyed almost the whole of Moscow by fire in

1572, Devlét-Giréy made again an incursion the next year. He
was so sure of an easy victory, that the streets of Moscow, so
Kúrbski tells, were alotted in advance to the Murzas. He came
with an army of 120,000 men, and left on the field of battle
100,000.
[117] Either churches or images of the apostles; a similar
interpretation holds for the next line.
[118] She was shorn a nun by order of the False Demetrius,
and was sent to a distant monastery.
[119] Rozstríga means “he who has abandoned his tonsure.”
[120] Filarét Nikítich, the father of Mikhaíl Fedórovich, returned
from his Lithuanian captivity in 1619 and was at once proclaimed
Patriarch.
 Yúri Krizhánich. (1617-about 1677.)
Krizhánich was a Croatian who had studied at the Croatian
Seminary at Vienna, at the university of Bologna, and at the
Greek College of St. Athanasius at Rome, where he came in
contact with some Russians. He early dreamed of a union of
all the Slavic nations under the rule of Russia, and in 1657 he
went to Southern Russia, where he began a propaganda
among the Cossacks in favour of a union with that country.
Two years later he appeared in Moscow, where his Catholic
religion and his efforts at introducing a Western culture
brought him into disrepute, and he was at once banished to
Siberia, where he lived until the year 1676. He composed a
large number of works on an Universal Slavic language, on
the Russian empire in the seventeenth century, and on the
union of the Churches, writing not in Russian, but in a strange
mixture of several Slavic languages, of his own invention. In
these he developed a strong Panslavism, full of hatred of
everything foreign, except foreign culture, and expressed high
hopes for Russia’s future greatness. His works are said to
have been used by Peter the Great, but they were not
published until 1860.

POLITICAL REASONS FOR THE UNION OF THE CHURCHES

The sixth reason for my contention is of a political nature, and

refers to the nation’s weal. For this discord of the Churches is even
now the cause of Doroshénko’s rebellion and the Turkish invasion,
and continuation of the present war, and has from the beginning
been the cause of much evil. The Poles have an ancient adage: Aut
Moscovia Polonizat, aut Polonia Moscovizat, i. e., Either Moscow
shall become Polish, or Poland shall be a part of the Russian
empire. It is written in the histories of other nations, and the advisers
of the Tsar know it, that in the days of Feódor Ivánovich and later
there have been many congresses held and embassies sent for the
purpose of securing a Russian ruler for Poland and Lithuania. There
is no doubt but that Poland and Lithuania would have become
possessions of the Russian Tsars, if it were not for the division of the
Churches. And there would not have been many old and new wars,
nor bloodshed, in which so many hundreds of thousands of innocent
people have perished by the sword, and have been led into
Mussulman captivity. And the Russian nation would have long ago
been far advanced in profane and political sciences that are so
necessary for all well-educated persons, and would not be scorned
and ridiculed and hated by the European nations for its barbarism.
Nor would it suffer such unbearable disgrace and losses in war and
commerce from the Germans and Crimeans, as it is suffering now.
Book knowledge and political wisdom is a leaven of the mind, and a
fast friendship with the Poles and Lithuanians would have made the
Russian nation more renowned and more feared by the surrounding
peoples, and richer in all earthly possessions.

ON KNOWLEDGE

Kings must instruct their subjects, parents their children, how to

obtain knowledge. The time has come for our nation to be instructed
in various branches, for God has in His mercy and kindness uplifted
through Russia a Slavic kingdom to glory, power and majesty, such
as for splendour has never existed before among us. We observe
with other nations that as soon as a kingdom rises to higher
importance, the sciences and arts at once begin to flourish among
them. We, too, must learn, for under the honoured rule of the
Righteous Tsar and Great King Alexis Mikháylovich we have an
opportunity to wipe off the mould of our ancient barbarism, to acquire
various sciences, to adopt a better organisation of society, and to
reach a higher well-being.

ON FOREIGNERS

We are not possessed of an innate vivacity, nor praiseworthy

national characteristics, nor sincerity of heart. For people who have
such pride do not allow foreigners to command them, except by
force, whereas our nation of its own free will invites foreigners to
come to its country. Not one people under the sun has since the
beginning of the world been so abused and disgraced by foreigners
as we Slavs have been by the Germans. Our whole Slavic nation
has been subject to this kind of treatment; everywhere we have upon
our shoulders Germans, Jews, Scotchmen, Gypsies, Armenians,
Greeks and merchants of other nationalities, who suck our blood. In
Russia you will see nowhere any wealth, except in the Tsar’s
treasury; everywhere there is dire, bare poverty.
 Grigóri Kotoshíkhin. (1630-1667.)
Grigóri Kotoshíkhin was a clerk, and later a scribe
(podyáchi) in the Department of Legations, a kind of Foreign
Office. He had been frequently employed as an ambassador
in connection with various treaties between Russia and
Sweden and Poland. While at Moscow, he had been guilty of
some dishonesty to his own country by giving certain secrets
of State to the Swedish ambassador; but that was an offence
not uncommon at Moscow, where patriotism was seldom of a
disinterested character. In 1664 he was sent out with the
Russian army that was then operating against Poland. Shortly
after, its two generals, Cherkásski and Prozoróvski, were
recalled, and Dolgorúki was sent in their place. The latter tried
to get Kotoshíkhin’s aid in denouncing his two predecessors
for traitorous actions, but Kotoshíkhin refused. Fearing the
wrath of Dolgorúki, he fled, first to Poland, and then, through
Prussia and Lubeck, to Sweden. He settled in Stockholm,
where he was employed in a semi-official capacity in the
Foreign Office. In a fit of intoxication he killed his host, who
was the official Russian translator of Sweden, and for this
crime he was beheaded.
Kotoshíkhin had evidently formed the plan of writing about
Russian customs before his arrival in Stockholm, but he was
also encouraged by distinguished Swedish statesmen, who
hoped to find important information about Russia in his work.
In his capacity of Legation scribe Kotoshíkhin had an
excellent opportunity to become intimately acquainted with
the immediate surroundings of the Tsar; but he supplemented
his knowledge by a clear insight, which he had gained in his
intercourse with other nations. There is no other work of Old
Russia that gives so detailed an account of contemporary
society. Kotoshíkhin’s work was first discovered in 1840,
though several manuscript translations in Swedish were
known to be extant in various libraries.
 THE EDUCATION OF THE PRINCES

FROM CHAP. 1.

For the bringing up of the Tsarévich or Tsarévna they select from

among the women of all ranks a good, pure, sweet-tempered and
healthy woman, and that woman resides for a year in the Upper
Palace, in the apartments of the Tsarítsa. At the expiration of the
year, the husband of that woman, if she be of noble origin, is made
governor of a city, or receives some lands in perpetuity; if she be a
scribe’s, or some other serving-man’s wife, he is promoted and
granted a goodly salary; if he be a countryman, he is given a good
sum, and both are freed from the taxes and other imposts of the Tsar
during their whole lives. The Tsarévich and Tsarévna have also a
chief-nurse to look after them, a distinguished boyár’s wife,—an old
widow, and a nurse and other servants. When the Tsarévich reaches
the age of five, he is put in the keeping of a renowned boyár, a quiet
and wise man, and the latter has for a companion a man from the
lower ranks; they also choose from among the children of the boyárs
a few of the same age as the Tsarévich, to be his servants and
butlers. When the time arrives to teach the Tsarévich to read and
write, they select teachers from the instructed people, who are of a
quiet disposition and not given to drinking; the teacher of writing is
chosen from among the Legation scribes; they receive instruction in
Russia in no other language, neither Latin, Greek, German nor any
other, except Russian.
The Tsaréviches and Tsarévnas have each separate apartments
and servants to look after them. No one is permitted to see the
Tsarévich before his fifteenth year, except those people who serve
him, and the boyárs and Near People[121]; but after fifteen years he
is shown to all people, as his father goes with him to church or to
entertainments. When the people find out that he has been
presented, they come on purpose from many cities to get a look at
him. As the Tsaréviches, when they are young, and the elder and
younger Tsarévnas go to church, there are borne cloth screens all
around them, so that they cannot be seen; likewise, they cannot be
seen when they stand in church, except by the clergy, for they are
surrounded in church with taffeta, and there are few people in church
during that time but boyárs and Near People. Similarly, when they
travel to the monasteries to pray, their carriages are covered with
taffeta. For their winter rides, the Tsarítsa and Tsarévnas use
kaptánas, that is, sleighs in the shape of small huts that are covered
with velvet or red cloth, with doors at both sides, with mica windows
and taffeta curtains; for their summer rides they use kolymágas that
are also covered with cloth; these are entered by steps and are
made like simple carts on wheels, and not like carriages that hang
down on leather straps. These kolymágas and kaptánas have two
shafts, and are without an axle; only one horse is hitched in them,
with other horses in tandem.

PRIVATE LIFE OF THE BOYÁRS AND OF OTHER RANKS (CHAP. 13)

Boyárs and Near People live in their houses, both of stone and
wood, that are not well arranged; their wives and children live all in
separate rooms. Only a few of the greater boyárs have their own
churches in their courts; and those of the high and middle boyárs
who have no churches of their own, but who are permitted to have
priests at their houses, have the matins and vespers and other
prayers said in their own apartments, but they attend mass in any
church they may choose; they never have the mass in their own
houses. The boyárs and Near People pay their priests a yearly
salary, according to agreement; if the priests are married people,
they receive a monthly allowance of food and drink, but the widowed
priests eat at the same table with their boyárs.
On church holidays, and on other celebrations, such as name
days, birthdays and christenings, they frequently celebrate together.
It is their custom to prepare simple dishes, without seasoning,
without berries, or sugar, without pepper, ginger or other spices, and
they are little salted and without vinegar. They place on the table one
dish at a time; the other dishes are brought from the kitchen and are
held in the hands by the servants. The dishes that have little vinegar,
salt and pepper are seasoned at the table; there are in all fifty to one
hundred such dishes.
The table manners are as follows: before dinner the hosts order
their wives to come out and greet their guests. When the women
come, they place themselves in the hall, or room, where the guests
are dining, at the place of honour,[122] and the guests stand at the
door; the women greet the guests with the small salute,[123] but the
guests bow to the ground. Then the host makes a low obeisance to
his guests and bids them kiss his wife. At the request of his guests,
the host kisses his wife first; then the guests make individual bows
and, stepping forward, kiss his wife and, walking back again, bow to
her once more; she makes the small salute each time she kisses a
guest. Then the hostess brings each guest a glass of double-or
treble-spiced brandy, the size of the glass being a fourth, or a little
more, of a quart. The host makes as many low obeisances as there
are guests, asking each one in particular to partake of the brandy
which his wife is offering them. By the request of the guests, the host
bids his wife to drink first, then he drinks himself, and then the guests
are served; the guests make a low obeisance before drinking, and
also after they have drunk and as they return the glass. To those that
do not drink brandy, a cup of Rumney or Rhine wine, or some other
liquor, is offered.
After this drinking the hostess makes a bow to the guests and
retires to her apartments to meet her guests, the wives of the boyárs.
The hostess and the wives of the guests never dine with the men,
except at weddings; an exception is also made when the guests are
near relatives and there are no outsiders present at the dinner.
During the dinner, the host and guests drink after every course a cup
of brandy, or Rumney or Rhine wine, and spiced and pure beer, and
various kinds of meads. When they bring the round cakes to the
table, the host’s daughters-in-law, or married daughters, or the wives
of near relatives come into the room, and the guests rise and,
leaving the table, go to the door and salute the women; then the
husbands of the women salute them, and beg the guests to kiss their
wives and drink the wine they offer. The guests comply with their
request and return to the table, while the women go back to their
apartments. After dinner the host and guests drink more freely each
other’s healths, and drive home again. The boyárs’ wives dine and
drink in the same manner in their own apartments, where there are
no men present.
When a boyár or Near Man is about to marry off his son, or
himself, or a brother, or nephew, or daughter, or sister, or niece, he,
having found out where there is a marriageable girl, sends his
friends, men or women, to the father of that girl, to say that such and
such a one had sent them to inquire whether he would be willing to
give his daughter or relative to him or his relative, and what the girl’s
dowry would be in the trousseau, money, patrimony and serfs. If the
person addressed is willing to give him his daughter, or relative, he
replies to the inquiry that he intends to marry off the girl, only he has
to consider the matter with his wife and family, and that he will give a
definite answer on a certain day; but if he does not wish to give him
the girl, knowing that he is a drunkard, or fast, or has some other bad
habit, he will say at once that he will not give him the girl, or he will
find some excuse for refusing the request.
Having taken counsel with his wife and family, and having decided
to give him the girl, he makes a detailed list of her dowry, in money,
silver and other ware, dresses, patrimony and serfs, and sends it to
the people who had come to him from the prospective bridegroom,
and they, in their turn, take it to the bridegroom. Nothing is told of the
matter to the prospective bride, who remains in ignorance thereof.
The dowry of the bride appearing satisfactory, the groom sends his
people to the bride’s parents, to ask them to present the girl. The
bride’s parents reply that they are willing to show their daughter, only
not to the prospective groom, but to his father, mother, sister or near
female relative, in whom the groom may have special confidence.
On the appointed day the groom sends his mother or sister to
inspect the bride; the bride’s parents make preparations for that day,
attire their daughter in a fine garment, invite their relatives to dinner,
and seat their daughter at the table.
When the inspectress arrives, she is met with the honour due her,
and is placed at the table near the bride. Sitting at the table, the
inspectress converses with the girl on all kinds of subjects, in order
to try her mind and manner of speech, and closely watches her face,
eyes and special marks, in order to bring a correct report to the
bridegroom; having stayed a short time, she returns to the
bridegroom. If the inspectress takes no liking to the bride, having
discovered that she is silly, or homely, or has imperfect eyes, or is
lame, or a poor talker, and so reports to the groom, he gives her up,
and that is the last of it. But if the bride has found favour in the
inspectress’s eyes, and she tells the groom that the girl is good and
clever, and perfect in speech and all things, the groom sends his
former friends again to the girl’s parents, telling them that he likes
their daughter, and that he wishes to come to a parley to write the
marriage contract, in order to marry her on a certain date. The
bride’s parents send word to the groom through his trusted people
that he should come to the parley with a few of his friends in whom
he has most confidence on a certain day, in the forenoon or
afternoon.
On the appointed day the groom puts on his best clothes, and
drives with his father, or near relatives, or friends whom he loves
best to the bride’s parents. Upon arrival, the bride’s parents and her
near relatives meet them with due honour, after which they go into
the house and seat themselves according to rank. Having sat a
while, the groom’s father or other relative remarks that they have
come for the good work, as he has bid them; the host answers that
he is glad to see them, and that he is ready to take up the matter.
Then both sides begin to discuss all kinds of marriage articles and to
set the day for the wedding according to how soon they can get
ready for it, in a week, a month, half a year, a year, or even more.
Then they enter their names and the bride’s name and the names of
witnesses in the marriage contract, and it is agreed that he is to take
the girl on a certain date, without fail, and that the girl is to be turned
over to him on that date, without fail; and it is provided in that
contract that if the groom does not take the girl on the appointed day,
or the father will not give him his daughter on that day, the offending
party has to pay 1000, or 5000, or 10,000 roubles, as the agreement
may be. Having stayed a while, and having eaten and drunk, they
return home, without having seen the bride, and without the bride
having seen the groom; but the mother, or married sister, or wife of
some relative comes out to present the groom with some embroidery
from the bride.
If after that parley the groom finds out something prejudicial to the
bride, or someone interested in the groom tells him that she is deaf,
or mute, or maimed, or has some other bad characteristic, and the
groom does not want to take her,—and the parents of the bride
complain about it to the Patriarch that he has not taken the girl
according to the marriage articles, and does not want to take her,
and thus has dishonoured her; or the bride’s parents, having found
out about the groom that he is a drunkard, or diceplayer, or maimed,
or has done something bad, will not give him their daughter, and the
groom complains to the Patriarch,—the Patriarch institutes an
inquiry, and the fine is collected from the guilty party according to the
contract, and is given to the groom or bride, as the case may be; and
then both may marry whom they please.
But if both parties carry out their agreement, and get ready for the
wedding on the appointed day, then the groom invites to the wedding
his relatives and such other people as he likes, to be his ceremonial
guests, in the same manner as I described before about the Tsar’s
wedding[124]; on the part of the bride the guests are invited in the
same way. On the day of the wedding tables are set at the houses of
the groom and bride, and the word being given the groom that it is
time to fetch the bride, they all set out according to the ceremonial
rank: First the bread-men carry bread on a tray, then, if it be summer,
the priest with the cross rides on horseback, but in winter in a sleigh;
then follow the boyárs, the thousand-man, and the groom.
Having reached the court of the bride’s house, they enter the hall
in ceremonial order, and the bride’s father and his guests meet them
with due honour, and the order of the wedding is the same as
described in the Tsar’s wedding. When the time arrives to drive to
church to perform the marriage, the bride’smaids ask her parents to
give the groom and bride their blessing for the marriage. They bless
them with words, but before leaving bless them with a holy image,
and, taking their daughter’s hand, give her to the groom.
 Then the ceremonial guests, the priest, and the groom with his
bride, whose hand he is holding, go out of the hall, and her parents
and their guests accompany them to the court; the groom places the
bride in a kolymága or kaptána, mounts a horse, or seats himself in
a sleigh; the ceremonial guests do likewise, and all drive to the
church where they are to be married. The bride’s parents and their
guests return to the hall, where they eat and drink until news is
brought from the groom; the bride is accompanied only by her own
and the bridegroom’s go-betweens. The two having been united, the
whole troop drives to the groom’s house, and news is sent to the
bride’s father that they have been propitiously married. When they
arrive at the groom’s court, the groom’s parents and their guests
meet them, and the parents, or those who are in their stead, bless
them with the images, and offer them bread and salt, and then all
seat themselves at the table and begin to eat, according to the
ceremony; and then the bride is unveiled.
The next morning the groom drives out with the bride’s-maid to call
the guests, those of his and the bride’s, to dinner. When he comes to
the bride’s parents, he thanks them for their having well brought up
their daughter, and for having given her to him in perfect health; after
having made the round to all the guests, he returns home. When all
the guests have arrived, the bride offers gifts to all the ceremonial
guests. Before dinner the groom goes with all the company to the
palace to make his obeisance to the Tsar. Having arrived in the
presence of the Tsar, all make a low obeisance, and the Tsar, without
taking off his cap, asks the married couple’s health. The groom bows
to the ground, and then the Tsar congratulates those who are united
in legitimate wedlock, and blesses the married pair with images, and
he presents them with forty sables, and for their garments a bolt of
velvet, and atlas, and gold-coloured silk, and calamanco, and simple
taffeta, and a silver vessel, a pound and a half to two pounds in
weight, to each of them; but the bride is not present at the audience.
Then the Tsar offers the thousand-man, and bridegroom, and the
ceremonial guests a cup of Rumney wine, and then a pitcher of
cherry wine, and after they have emptied their wine the Tsar
dismisses them.
 After arriving home, they begin to eat and drink, and after the
dinner the parents and guests bless the married couple with images
and make them all kinds of presents, and after dinner the guests
drive home. On the third day, the bride and groom and the guests go
to dinner to the bride’s parents, with all their guests, and after the
dinner the bride’s parents and their guests make presents to the
married couple, and they drive home; and that is the end of the
festivity.
During the time that the groom is in the presence of the Tsar, the
bride sends in her name presents to the Tsarítsa and Tsarévnas,
tidies of taffeta, worked with gold and silver and pearls; the Tsarítsa
and Tsarévnas accept these gifts, and send to inquire about the
bride’s health.
During all the wedding festivities, no women are present, and
there is no music, except blowing of horns and beating of drums.
The proceeding is the same when a widowed daughter, or sister,
or niece is married off: the ceremonial and the festivity are the same.
In the beginning of the festivity, the priest who is to marry the pair
receives from the Patriarch and the authorities a permit, with the seal
attached to it, to marry them, having first ascertained that the bride
and groom are not related by sponsorship, nor by the ties of
consanguinity in the sixth and seventh generation, nor that he is the
husband of a fourth wife, nor she the wife of a fourth husband; but if
he discover that they are related by sponsorship, and so forth, he is
not allowed to marry them. Should the priest permit such an unlawful
marriage to take place, with his knowledge or without his knowledge,
he would be discharged from his priesthood and, if he was knowingly
guilty, he has to pay a big fine, and the authorities lock him up for a
year; but the married pair is divorced, without being fined, except the
sin which they have incurred, and if they have not been previously
married three times, they may marry again.
If a widower wants to marry a maiden, the ceremonial at the
wedding is the same, but during the wreathing in church the wreath
is placed on the groom’s right shoulder, whereas the bride wears her
wreath upon her head; if a widower for the third time marries a
maiden, the ceremonial is the same, but the wreath is placed on the
groom’s left shoulder, and the bride wears hers upon her head. The
same is done when a widow marries for the second or third time. But
when a widower marries for the second or third time a widow, then
there is no wreathing, and only a prayer is said instead of the
wreathing, and the wedding ceremonial is different from the one
mentioned above.
The manner of the parley, marriage and ceremonial wedding is the
same with the lower orders of the nobility as described above, and
the wedding is as sumptuous as they can afford to make it, but they
do not call upon the Tsar, except those of his retinue.
Among the merchants and peasants the parley and the ceremonial
are exactly the same, but they differ in their acts and dresses from
the nobility, each according to his means.
It sometimes happens that a father or mother has two or three
daughters, where the eldest daughter is maimed, being blind, or
lame, or deaf, or mute, while the other sisters are perfect in shape
and beauty and speech. When a man begins to sue for their
daughter, and he sends his mother, or sister, or someone else in
whom he has confidence to inspect her, the parents sometimes
substitute the second or third daughter for their maimed sister, giving
her the name of the latter, so that the inspectress, not knowing the
deceit, takes a liking to the girl and reports to the groom that she is a
proper person to marry. Then the groom, depending upon her words,
has a parley with the girl’s parents, that he is to marry her upon an
appointed day, and that the parents are to give her to him upon the
appointed day, and the fine is set so high that the guilty party is not
able to pay it. When the wedding takes place, the parents turn over
to him the maimed daughter, whose name is given in the articles of
marriage, but who is not the one the inspectresses had seen. But the
groom cannot discover on the wedding day that she is blind, or
disfigured, or has some other defect, or that she is deaf or mute, for
at the wedding she is veiled and does not say a word, nor can he
know whether she is lame, because her bride’smaids lead her under
her arms.
 But in that case the man who has been deceived complains to the
Patriarch and authorities, and these take the articles of marriage and
institute an inquiry among the neighbours and housefolk, each one
individually, whether the person he had married is the one indicated
by name in the marriage articles. If so, the articles are valid, and no
faith is to be put in his contention, on the ground that it was his
business to be sure whom he was going to marry. But if the
neighbours and housefolk depose that the bride is not the same as
mentioned by name in the articles, the married pair is divorced, and
the parents have to pay a large fine and damages to the groom, and
besides the father is beaten with the knout, or his punishment is
even more severe, according to the Tsar’s will.
The same punishment is meted out to the man who presents his
serving maid or a widow in place of his unmarried daughter, by
giving her another name and dressing her up so as to look like his
daughter, or when his daughter is of short stature and they place her
on a high chair in such a way that her defect is not noticeable.
When parents have maimed or old daughters, and no one wants
to marry them, they are sent to a monastery to be shorn nuns.
When a man wants to inspect the bride himself, and the parents
grant the request, knowing that she is fair and that they need not be
ashamed of her, but the groom, having taken no liking to her, decries
her with damaging and injurious words, and thus keeps other suitors
away from her,—and the bride’s parents complain to the Patriarch or
authorities: these institute an inquiry, and having found the man
guilty, marry him to the girl by force; but if he has married another girl
before the complaint has been entered, the girl’s disgrace is taken
from her by an ukase.
When a man marries off his daughter or sister, and gives her a
large dowry in serfs and patrimony, and that daughter or sister,
having borne no children, or having borne some who have all died,
dies herself,—the dowry is all taken from her husband and is turned
over to those who had married her off. But if she leaves a son or
daughter, the dowry is, for the sake of her child, not taken from her
husband.
 Gentle reader! Wonder not, it is nothing but the truth when I say
that nowhere in the whole world is there such deception practised
with marriageable girls as in the kingdom of Muscovy; there does not
exist there the custom, as in other countries, for the suitor to see and
sue for the bride himself.
The boyárs and Near People have in their houses 100, or 200, or
300, or 500, or 1000 servants, male and female, according to their
dignity and possessions. These servants receive a yearly salary, if
they are married, 2, 3, 5 or 10 roubles, according to their services,
and their wearing apparel, and a monthly allowance of bread and
victuals; they live in their own rooms in the court of the boyár’s
house. The best of these married servants are sent out by the
boyárs every year, by rotation, to their estates and villages, with the
order to collect from their peasants the taxes and rents. The
unmarried older servants receive some small wages, but the
younger ones receive nothing; all the unmarried servants get their
wearing apparel, hats, shirts and boots; the older of these servants
live in the farther lower apartments, and receive their food and drink
from the kitchen; on holidays they receive two cups of brandy each.
The female servants who are widows remain living in the houses of
their husbands, and they receive a yearly wage and a monthly
allowance of food; other widows and girls stay in the rooms of the
boyárs’ wives and daughters, and they receive their wearing apparel,
and their food from the boyár’s kitchen.
When these girls are grown up, the boyárs marry them, and also
the widows, to some one of their servants to whom they have taken
a liking, but sometimes by force. The wedding takes place in the
boyár’s hall, according to the rank of the marrying parties; the food
and festive dresses are furnished by the boyár. The girls are never
married to any person outside the boyár’s court, because both male
and female servants are his perpetual serfs. In the boyár’s house
there is an office for all domestic affairs, where an account is kept of
income and expenses, and all the affairs of the servants and
peasants are investigated and settled.
 FOOTNOTES:

[121] A division of nobility below the boyárs.

[122] In the front corner, under the holy images.
[123] Bending as far as the girdle.
[124] “The wedding ceremony is as follows: on the Tsar’s side
the first order is the father and mother, or those who are in place
of his parents; the second order, the travellers,—the chief priest
with the cross, the thousand-man, who is a great personage in
that procession, and then the Tsar: eight boyárs. The duties of the
travellers are as follows: they stay with the Tsar and Tsarítsa at
the crowning in church, and at the table occupy higher places
than the others; the friends (drúzhka), whose duty it is to call the
guests to the wedding, to make speeches at the wedding in the
name of the thousand-man and Tsar, and to carry presents; the
bride’s maids (svákha) whose duty it is to watch the Tsarítsa, to
dress her and undress her; the candleholder, who holds the
candle when they get the Tsarítsa ready for the crowning; the
breadholders, who carry the bread on litters to and from church
(these litters are covered with gold velvet and embroidered cloth
and sable furs); the equerry with his suite. The third order is the
sitting boyárs, twelve men and twelve women, who sit as guests
at the tables, with the Tsar’s parents, but do not go to church with
the Tsar. The fourth order is of the court, who attend to the food
and drink.”